Wednesday, January 23, 2008

This was hanging in the O'Briens Pub in the Pittsburgh International Airport. Snapped the pic of it Monday night. "Kelly" has a real Rasputin quality about her. (Interestingly, the really had to beat the piss out of Rasputin to kill him. I wonder if that's what the text implies. ;)

The murder of Rasputin has become legend, some of it invented by the very men who killed him, which is why it becomes difficult to discern exactly what happened. It is, however, generally agreed that, on December 16, 1916, having decided that Rasputin's influence over the Tsaritsa had made him a far-too-dangerous threat to the empire, a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov and the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (one of the few Romanov family members to escape the annihilation of the family during the Red Terror), apparently lured Rasputin to the Yusupovs' Moika Palace, where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. According to legend, Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men. Conversely, Maria's account asserts that, if her father did eat or drink poison, it was not in the cakes or wine, because, after the attack by Guseva, he had hyperacidity, and avoided anything with sugar. In fact, she expressed doubt that he was poisoned at all.

Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, and he finally met his end there—as had both his siblings before him.

2 comments:

KELLY ‘descendant or grandchild of Ceallach’, or ‘from of the name name Ceallach, possibly meaning “Bright-headed”’. The word Ceallach, meaning contentious, has been adapted by recruiting sergeants to mean "Brave Warrior" (in English-speaking armies), and by American popular culture to mean "Warrior Princess". OTHER MEANINGS: ‘Warrior/Defender’, ‘Warrior’, ‘war’, ‘Lively’, ‘farm by the spring’ or ‘from the spring’ or ‘born on the farm during spring’, ‘holly’, ‘strife’, or ‘church, monastery’, ‘Aggressive’, and ‘wood’.(Kelly Warrier Princess)

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